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Thursday, 14 August 2014

A Boroughbridge Boyhood: Epilogue

Aunt Ann Pick died in 1860 at the age of fifty and her husband William in 1872. Aunt Bell, the active spinster aunt, died in 1880 at the home of her niece Jane Capes.

Uncle William Henlock died in 1866. In his Will he left the sum of £200, the interest of which was to

William Henlock of Great Ouseburn

be distributed to the poor of the parish by the Vicar and Churchwardens. His wife Ellen died in 1885. They are both commemorated in a memorial on the wall of the church of St Mary the Virgin at Great Ouseburn, where there is also a plaque recording Mr Henlock's legacy.

Uncle William Hirst died in 1879 at the age of eighty-one.

He had outlived his daughter Dorothy, who died the year before. John recorded her funeral on 28 November 1878:

went to poor Dora Hirst’s funeral at 3 o clock. She was buried at BB Church. Tremendous funeral. All the Shops closed. Grannie [his mother] and Alice went and so did all from Uncles except Uncle who is still very poorly. It is indeed a sad day at BB.

She was fifty-one years old and is commemorated by a stained glass window in the church to which she had been devoted through her life. Her unmarried sister Mary Barker Hirst lived alone in Boroughbridge after the death of Dora and her father.

Their sister Sophy Hirst married William Thompson, a London auctioneer with family in Bridlington. They lived in Russell Square in some style – they were holidaying in Nice in 1880. After Sophy's death in 1900 and William's retirement, he and his unmarried daughter Edith Wharton Thompson moved north to Harrogate.

John's cousin Mary Redmayne, wife of his friend James Sedgwick, the Boroughbridge doctor, was a sociable, kind and active neighbour often mentioned in letters by John's mother. She died “of apoplexy” on the night of Whit Sunday 1892 “very suddenly at Victoria Station London”. She was fifty years old. James and his unmarried son and daughter left Ladywell House and the practice to Dr Daggett and moved to Wimbledon, perhaps to be near his son Hubert Redmayne Sedgwick and his family; Hubert was a surgeon at St Thomas's. Mary's parents, Thomas and Jane Redmayne, died within a week of each other in the early spring of 1862 and are commemorated in St Peter's, Stainforth. Their son Henry died aged twenty-six in 1868 and was buried at Stainforth:

the Volunteers of which he was Ensign attended the funeral and carried him shoulder height all the way from Taitlands to Stainforth church and the band played the Dead March and 3 volleys were fired over his grave

John's sister Jane Stubbs and her husband Henry Hawkesley Capes moved from Aldborough to Knaresborough a few years after their marriage in 1856. By the 1871 Census they had moved to Harlow Carr and they spent the last decades of their lives at Belmont, Starbeck. They had a large and lively family of eight children, described by Jane's Aunt Bell as "a wild company". Jane's first baby was born when she was thirty-one years old and her last when she was aged forty-three. Jane was seventy-five when she died in 1902; she was buried at Harlow. Henry died three years later in Ilkley at the age of seventy-eight.

Joe Stubbs and Sarah Sedgwick took over the family business and lived at the Bridge Foot. Their two eldest children (Lillie and Willie) were close in age; their third, Tom, was born when Willie was thirteen years old and Sarah was thirty-nine. She died quite suddenly in 1887 "of a stoppage of the bowels" when Tom was fifteen. Joe died in 1906, "he has been long ill" recorded John.

Tom died suddenly and unexpectedly in London at the age of thirty-two on 10 January 1866 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. He was not married.

Lizzy married William Workman Dunhill from Doncaster, a 28 year old pharmaceutical chemist. From his name and home we can guess that he was a relation of the Workmans of Arksey, the family whose hospitality John had enjoyed so much. Lizzy and William had two daughters, Edith and Mary. William died in 1887 and Lizzy in 1914. Her last years were spent with Edith at Cony Garth, Arksey. Her daughter Mary married Dr Henry Ingledew Daggett, James Sedgwick’s partner and then successor at Boroughbridge. The Daggetts lived with their three children at Ladywell House.

Alice Stubbs never married. When Joe took over at the Bridge Foot Alice and her mother moved to St James’s Square where Alice remained for the rest of her life. Her great niece remembered her as a tiny, dainty and spotless figure. She was devoted to her brother John and found a dear friend in his wife Ellis.